MIROSLAWIEC, Poland – A young female Polish Soldier just wheeled into trauma bed number three in a make-shift emergency room set up by the 212th Combat Support Hospital where Specialist Adriana Rosas awaits. The next few decisions over mere seconds may just determine the outcome of this warrior’s life. Even though the injuries are notional, a simulated mass casualty event that is part of Exercise Anakonda 2016, the decisions Rosas makes now will prepare her for decisions she may have to make when the trauma is real.
When Ms. Adriana Rosas steps into her office in San Antonio, Texas, as a weight-loss clinical manager, her duties are important to her clients but are geared more toward administration and non-emergency patient care.
Spc. Rosas and Ms. Rosas are never seen together, yet one could not exist without the other. Rosas made the decision to enlist in the Army Reserve as a medic after looking for a change in her life. She has been in the Reserve for over five years and is currently assigned to the 228th Combat Support Hospital from San Antonio, Texas.
Like, 200,000 other Reserve Soldiers, Rosas must find a balance of two separate and distinct lives. Like many comic book superheroes, when putting on the uniform a certain transformation occurs.
“I feel a little more important when I put my uniform on,” said Rosas. “Someone’s life could be in my hands.”
Large-scale exercises, such as Anakonda 2016, which is a Polish-led multinational exercise that involves approximately 31,000 participants from more than 20 nations, provide Reserve soldiers an opportunity to perform their job duties in similar conditions that they would find in a deployed environment.
Rosas explains that without Exercise Anakonda 16, “I would be less prepared. It was either come to one of these missions or do two weeks at home [station], which meant paperwork. That has nothing to do with medical. [This exercise] definitely makes us ready.”